The only problem they ever had was back in the day they overheated easily.
Very easily.
In college (early aughts), I worked as tech support for fellow students. Several times I had to take the case cover off, point a desktop fan into the case, and tell the kid he needed to get thermal paste and a better cooler (services we didn’t offer).
Also, as others have said, AMD CPUs have not always been superior to Intel in performance or even value (though AMDs have almost always been cheaper). It’s been a back-and-forth race for much of their history.
Games like Cities: Skylines are perfect for middle-aged and older dads. It fits right into things like fixing up and old car or building some wooden stuff.
But also any games for any people. I’m a 43yo dad who just got my kids interested in hotseat Mass Effect (they don’t enjoy doing the combat so much).